Labor/Work

"Don't turn left, because that area is full of "bums" and it doesn’t reflect on the real "San Francisco“, the cab driver clicked his teeth together as he rattled on about which sights to see in his beautiful San Francisco (which ironically, due to a gentrification inspired eviction, he no longer lived in)

‘It’s getting really wet, now’ I thought, wincing with every footstep from a screw in my ankle. ‘Soon, it’ll be coming down too hard to move this library.’ My shoulders aching from moving shelves, books, and boxes from Uncle Al’s and Mama Dee’s Living (Really) Public Library. I know however that Mama Dee sits there, watching me from the corner in her altar, occasionally giving me thoughts to keep moving forward. The spirit I feel in there is heavy.

I’m trying to make it home too. Cause I’m riding around in the same car that the police pulled me over in and drawed guns on me and my children on March 3, 2017. I need someone to trail me home now and make sure I make it from East Oakland to West Oakland safe while I left my children’s school.

“What is your name,” a mechanical voice shouted through the receiver of my phone. Before I could answer this bizarre beginning to a call, he added, “ What is your address, Where do you work, Do you have any other phone numbers…?” The barrage of accusatory questions with no basis continued for several minutes with me barely able to get a word in edgewise, and then.., “Do you have a 13 year old son?”, with this sentence… my heart began to race, my eyes started to blur and the the room began to warp.

In November, for the second time in a decade, California voters will once again be presented with the opportunity to go to the ballots and vote on the legal recreational use of marijuana for adults. The first ballot initiative was only marginally defeated.The current one, proposition 64 - also known as AUMA -is all bad.It would potentially be harmful for poor youth under 21, particularly youth of color. For this demographic, being arrested with an ounce and/or not having money to pay a fine would immediately land them in jail.